About

Company Profile

The National Association of System Administrators (NASA), a premier provider of hardware maintenance and operating system support, was founded in 1994 by the present CEO, John Blanchard. Blanchard, a former support center contractor for a leading original equipment manufacturer (OEM), decided to use his last paycheck to provide computer maintenance service for “the little guy.” NASA now has more than 35,000 serial numbers under contract throughout North America, Mexico, Argentina and Canada.

NASA corporate headquarters are located in Crystal Lake, Illinois. The company now boasts a staff of highly skilled technical specialists strategically located throughout the country to serve NASA’s customers, a 24-hour customer call center, and two private airplanes with pilots available to rush technical specialists and parts to customers experiencing a critical outage.

NASA started out with one customer in 1994, and Sportif USA is a valued member of the NASA family to this day. NASA now boasts a customer base that includes Creative Automation, Kelly Services, Sallie Mae, Northern Illinois University, Western Illinois University, several counties in Indiana, TransHealthcare and IBM. Blanchard is especially proud of the fact that since 1994 not one customer has canceled a NASA maintenance contract to return to the OEM for maintenance.

NASA’s maintenance product offerings also have expanded over the years. In the beginning, NASA maintained only IBM equipment. Now NASA provides hardware maintenance and operating support for most platforms, including HP/Compaq®, EMC®, Sun®, StorageTek® and Dell®. NASA and the Department of Homeland Security have been discussing the means to develop a service provider security roadmap to define threats, countermeasures and vendor security certification criteria as it relates to maintenance and service provider access to governmental and corporate data center equipment.

In addition to standard maintenance contracts, NASA now offers disaster recovery testing, automatic call escalation, customer access to a web-based customer portal for case tracking, and NASAWatch™, a system management tool that continuously reports on the operational state of customers’ systems to maximize system availability.

In 1998, CEO John Blanchard founded National Association of System Administrators Corporation (NASA Corp.) to provide consultation and software development. In 2005, NASA Corp. introduced a line of case management software under the umbrella name of NASATrack™. These products include CALLTrack™, which is designed for customer service departments, CASETrack™ for judicial entities such as village, county, state and tribal governments, and CARETrack™ for rehabilitation facilities.

Philanthropy is a big part of the NASA story. Blanchard is a member of Angel Flight America (AFA), a non-profit, grassroots volunteer corps of more than 6,000 private pilots from all 50 states who transport patients and their families for free to hospitals for medical treatment. AFA members also provide free flights in the event of a national crisis or whenever there is a compelling human need.

Blanchard created a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, NASA Education, in September of 1999 to provide training for select, qualified applicants interested in pursuing IT-related fields. In 2005, NASA Education launched Project Fresh Start, which prepares displaced, disabled, homeless and other veterans in transition for careers in the IT industry.

NASA has been certified for ISO 9001:2000 registration and is a GSA Schedule Holder for Maintenance, Repair Service and Spare Parts. NASA is a member of the McHenry County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC), National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), AFCOM, the leading association for data center professionals, and the Association for Services Management International (AFSM International).